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Month: July 2015

And upgraded my Windows 7 Professional machine to Windows 10. Not as bad as I would have thought it would be.

I’ve pretty much unpinned all the bullshit from the start menu – I don’t have an Xbox that would be compatible, also don’t care about Cortana, or get MS office. Sorry – that ship has sailed. I just have LibreOffice 4.4 on the machine.

Performance wise I note running Netlflix in Google Chrome is much smoother.

It’s running on a Dell E6420 I5 quad core system with 4GB or RAM. I plan to upgrade the RAM thought.

So no more dunning to upgrade to Windows 10. I’m running it now – and allegedly this is supported FOREVER. That’s interesting by itself.

I got the feedback – they all loved/liked me. So now it’s negotiating what position I’m going in as. It was originally a SysAdmin job but because I have managed an I.T. staff before they want to talk to me about moving into a management role.

That would be cool. My management style is team builder. I love doing that.

I’m currently reading the book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco. It details what big business and society has done to various peoples and areas in the U.S.

I’m on the chapter now that talks about the coal mining in West Virginia, Kentucky and the like. You get a strong powerless vibe from the stories he tells.

But I can tell you – mechanized mining requires, wait for it, the internal combustion engine. And if you want to stop mountain top mining you have to get mechanically creative. It can be as simple as dumping a gallon or two of corn syrup in the fuel tank, or what i term creative re-wiring. Disconnect sensors, starters, steal batteries etc. If it’s a gasoline powered vehicle rewire the spark plugs. Switch em’ up some.

Do any of that and you’ll disable the vehicle for a good part of a day. Do it repeatedly – switch up targets to make it difficult.

The rich and big business want to fuck with us, I say we fuck with them. Put it this way – the rich think they’re immune from anything we might do. I think they are sorely mistaken. Just watch the movie The Jackal to get my gist. All it takes is a rifle, a scope and good ammo.

But the other parts of the book so far detail the genocide against the Native Americans and how the government shits all over the Native Americans to this day. Being that I’ve got a few percent Mohawk that one makes my blood boil just a bit.

Then there’s Camden, NJ – a hollowed out manufacturing town.

And now as I mentioned earlier I’m on the chapter about coal mining. One little blurb that emerges in this chapter is that we’ve got maybe 20 years of coal left to mine. After that – done. And then consider half of U.S. electric power comes from coal. It’s scary.

So the place I’m working – the contract runs out end of August. So I have been going to interviews.

This one was pretty good – I jibe with the people – in fact their Developer, Help Desk and current System Admin I had a really good rapport with. And the place is growing like crazy – they’re up to 180 people so far.

It’s in Quincy, MA. The commute would be a tad easier than the commute I have now. So there’s that. Plus I’m strongly considering moving into MA.

So went to WaterFire this evening. We headed out a bit after nine o’clock this evening. It was PACKED. You could barely get through. But we have dogged persistence. We pushed our way through when necessary. Almost body checked a few people myself. How can I explain, I know you see me. If you don’t move you’re gonna feel me.

We walked nearly the entirety of the event and finally found a spot to sit and watch the fire and do running commentary on the music choices. There were a couple where I suspected we might hear Swing Low Sweet Chariot, or maybe the theme from the Godfather.

They did have some living garoyles and statuary though. All part of a group called Ten31 productions. I’m thinking when he and I get married I’d like to have a couple pyres and gargoyles present. Nah, I’m just kidding but the pyres would be interesting.

Ok, so I know I’m behind the curve and the movie may not appeal to everyone.

But it’s cool. The plot of the story is the police start using humanoid robots for law enforcement. They have shells that are impervious to bullets etc. But they can’t tolerate say an RPG or similar. So unit 22 is about to be sent to be crushed.

But the lead programmer on the robots – he creates an artificial intelligence and uploads it to the unit 22 robot.

The story is all about Unit 22 or Chappie learning about his world. In the process the robot figures out how to transfer consciousness from robot to PS4, to USB stick, and finally human to robot.

RIPTA in case you were wondering is the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority. They run the bus system here in Rhode Island.

Now well over a decade ago they went from a zoned system to a one state, one rate system.

And with the budget crunch right now – they want to go BACK to a zoned system.

I’ll describe why that’s stupid.

It will unnecessarily complicate fare products. I’ll use as an example the product of theirs that I use most, the 15 ride pass. How would that work under a zoned system?

Not to mention it’ll also cause major problems as they won’t necessarily publish that there are zones that well.

Of course many years ago legislators tied RIPTA’s fortunes to the a few cents on the gasoline tax. But people are buying less gasoline with more fuel efficient vehicles. So RIPTA’s budget takes the hit.

It’s a delicate balance. But maybe as I’ve stated in the past they should just merge in with the MBTA. Because the MBTA – they charge the communities they serve. Yeah. And it’s not like there’s not precedent since RIPTA now sends buses to the South Attleboro train stop in MASSACHUSETTS.

But then I contend I’m paying $330 a month for an MBTA pass – it should work on RIPTA.